Anya Lipska - Where the Devil Can’t Go

‘One mistake doesn’t make me a bad builder,’ he shouted down the corridor after Janusz as the lift doors closed behind him.

Three floors down, a laughing group of young men piled in, carrying tools and paint kettles. Janusz saw that they all wore number one crew cuts – the ultra-short cut that had once been the badge of a recently completed stint in the military. Many young Poles apparently still favoured it, even though compulsory national service had been abandoned a year or more back.

On seeing the older man, they quieted and bobbed their heads: ‘ Dzien dobry, panu, ’ using the respectful form of address. Good lads, thought Janusz. But within seconds, their chatter, the closeness of their bodies, and the press of the lift wall at his back started to stir the old feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. His breathing grew shallow and the vaporous tang of solvent seemed to suck the air from his lungs.

As the lift plunged, the tallest one met his eye, grinned, and with an unpleasant jolt, Janusz saw his younger self reflected back at him, the unfinished features and gangly limbs, the absurd optimism. Then, without warning, another image, pin-sharp and even less welcome: Iza’s face, freckled, laughing as she clattered down the stairs of the university. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing away the other memories.

The helmeted ranks of ZOMO advancing through blizzarding snow, the obscene thump thump of lead-filled truncheons striking human flesh.

His breathing ragged now, Janusz hit the button for the next floor and pushed past the startled boys to the door, muttering some excuse. He took the remaining five flights down to the lobby at a run. Out in the street, he sucked in life-saving lungfuls of the chilly spring air.

Kurwa mac! Was he constantly to be reminded of the past by this deluge of young Poles?

‘Bloody foreigners,’ he said out loud, startling an old lady waiting at the bus stop. Suppressing a grin, he murmured an apology and headed to the café across the street.

Janusz inhaled the savoury aromas emanating from the café’s kitchen as he studied the menu, chalked up on a blackboard.

‘Dla pana?’ asked the fair-haired, plump-cheeked girl behind the counter, pen and pad poised.

‘Your bigos . Is it homemade or out of a tin?’ he asked. She made as if to cuff the side of his head. He ducked, grinning, and took his glass of lemon tea – the real thing, not some powdered rubbish – to the only empty table, beside a window made opaque by the café’s steamy fug.

The Polska Kuchnia , or Polish Kitchen, was a good half mile from the commotion of the Olympic site, but the place was packed with groups of construction workers in cement-stained work clothes filling up on the solid, comforting food of home: pierogi, golabki, flaki . These were the men turning the architects’ blueprints into reality: the stadium, the velodrome, the athletes’ village, as well as the high-rise apartment blocks shooting up around the edge of the five-hundred-acre site.

The young couple who ran the place had tried to make it more homely than the standard East End greasy spoon: there were checked tablecloths, brightly coloured bread baskets, even a crocus in a jam jar at every table. If it weren’t for the growl of passing lorries, thought Janusz, you could almost pretend you were in a little restaurant somewhere in the Tatra Mountains.

Just as the girl set down his hunter’s stew – and it looked like a good one, with slivers of duck, as well as the usual pork and kielbasa, poking through the sauerkraut – the street door crashed open and Oskar arrived.

Short, balding and barrel-chested, Oskar scoured the café with a belligerent stare, and found his target – a group of young guys in a corner laughing and joking over the remains of their meal. Planting his legs apart, he let fly with a volley of Polish.

‘What in the name of the Virgin are you still doing here, you sisterfuckers?’ he boomed. ‘What did I tell you yesterday? If you are late back again I’ll have the contractor on the blower cutting my balls off.’

The lads scrambled to their feet, a couple of them falling over their chair legs in their haste to get to the door, amid a barrage of laughter from the café’s other occupants, who’d stopped eating to enjoy the show. But Oskar was merciless.

‘Don’t try to hide your ugly mush from me, Karol, you cocksucker. Maybe your mummy did name you after the fucking Pope, God rest his soul,’ he made the sign of the cross without pausing for breath, ‘but I still haven’t forgotten that granite worktop you wrote off and I’m gonna fuck you up the dupa on payday.’

As the last of them scurried out, heads down, Oskar subsided, satisfied. Then, seeing Janusz, his face split in a grin. ‘ Czesc , Janek!’

Janusz stood to greet his friend and, without thinking, put out his hand. Oskar roared with laughter and, ignoring it, embraced his mate in a full bear hug, kissing him on alternate cheeks three times. Janusz cleared his throat: between Poles the effusive greeting was no big deal, but after two decades in England, it made him squirm.

Oskar put a hand on one hip and mimicked an effete handshake as he sat down. ‘You’ve been in England too long, mate. Soon you’ll be wanting to fuck with men!’ He chuckled delightedly at his joke.

Janusz smiled wearily. He loved Oskar like a wayward kid brother – a friendship that dated back to their first day of military service in 1980 – but he could be a pain in the ass. He could picture it still. A rainy day behind the barbed wire of Camp 117 in the Kashubian Lakeland, and the line of new conscripts, heads newly shorn and uniforms at least two sizes too big, looking more like bedraggled baby birds than soldiers. Even now the memory prompted a flare of anger. At seventeen, he and Oskar – all those young men – should have been full of hope. Instead, all they’d had to look forward to was endless months training for the threat of invasion by Western imperialist forces – and then what? Martial law, curfews and rationing … the dreary realpolitik of the socialist dream.

Oskar waved a pudgy hand at the table where his dawdling workers had sat. ‘Seriously though,’ he said, ‘these kids don’t know how easy their life is these days. Do they have any idea what site work was like here in the eighties? Twelve-hour shifts, no “ health and safety ”. Never mind an hour off for lunch, we didn’t even get a fucking tea break.’

Janusz grunted his agreement. ‘And if you wanted goggles or ear defenders, you had to buy them yourself,’ he said, tearing apart a piece of bread.

Oskar used his sleeve to wipe a porthole in the condensation of the window and peered out at the traffic. ‘Remember that chuj ,’ he mused, ‘The Paddy foreman on the M25 job – the guy who treated us like dogs?’

‘The one whose thermos you pissed in?’ asked Janusz, raising an eyebrow.

‘Yeah, that’s the one,’ said Oskar, a beatific grin spreading across his chubby face.

‘Fuck your mother,’ he said, peering at Janusz’s plate. ‘What is that shit you’re eating?’ – then, to the girl who had just arrived to take his order – ‘The bigos for me, too, darling. It looks delicious.’

After she had left, Janusz finished his last mouthful and pushed the plate away. ‘Too much paprika, perhaps, and the duck was a little overcooked, but not bad,’ he said with a judicious nod. He pulled out his box of cigars, then, remembering the crazy no smoking laws, reached for a toothpick instead.

‘Listen Oskar, I still want the booze, but I’ve got a problem. Any chance of you waiting a couple of weeks for the cash?’